


By Virtue Fall

by Lokei



Series: By Virtue Fall [1]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: Shades of Gray, Episode: The Devil You Know, First Time, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-22
Updated: 2008-08-22
Packaged: 2017-10-19 08:41:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/198995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lokei/pseuds/Lokei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall". (Act II, Scene I, Measure for Measure)  Episode tag to “The Devil You Know”</p>
            </blockquote>





	By Virtue Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks yet again to the ever-helpful[](http://princessofg.livejournal.com/profile)[ **princessofg**](http://princessofg.livejournal.com/) for her lovely beta work.

It only took Jack about half the canteen of water to notice that Daniel hadn’t had any.Not only was their archaeologist apparently unaffected by thirst, he was sitting up against the wall, behind Jack, head in hands and mouth rather unusually shut.

There was some excuse for that—after all, they were all sweaty, exhausted, covered in soot and smelling like brimstone.Jacob was at least sitting up, and Jack’s leg didn’t hurt if he didn’t, you know, breathe or move or anything, and Marty was actually smiling.Daniel, however, looked seven kinds of shattered.

Jack did not like that at all.Trying not to grimace with his usual flair for the dramatic, he twisted around enough to whack an unresponsive Daniel in the shin with the canteen.

Gently, of course.Mostly. Not that that mattered, since Daniel didn’t even flinch.

“Hey,” Jack tapped him again with a little more consideration for the fact that they’d all just been to Hell and back.“Rehydrate.That’s an order.”

It wasn’t the sort of thing he had to say very often any more.And for all Daniel got distracted on occasion by his ‘meaning of life stuff,’ the archaeologist never ever had to be told how to survive comfortably in hot locations.Deserts, tombs, nasty flaming rocks in the middle of an intergalactic war with delusional parasitical despots, same old drill.

Daniel blinked at him slowly, eyes red behind his glasses in a way that smacked strongly of their most recent trip to Abydos.Ah, shit.That blood of Sock-Lint crap probably gave him visions of Sha’re, which was the last damn thing Daniel needed.

Daniel picked up the canteen Jack was offering and took a long sip, then turned the canvas-covered object over and over in his hands, staring at it but not seeming to take in a thing.

For the first time Jack had the leisure to wonder how, when pretty much all the rest of them came back from their lovely little interviews with Apophis either comatose or barely coherent, Daniel had managed not only to walk back under his own steam, but to have the presence of mind beforehand to steal the communicator.And how far had he gotten smacked across the room to get it?Jack took the opportunity now while Daniel was too distracted to notice to look him over anxiously, at least the parts he could see.The omnipresent grime was rather detrimental to his limited diagnostic skills.

Granted, the man couldn’t be all that badly off.He’d pretty much single-handedly engineered getting them all to the right place at the right time, though Jack would have to remember to tell Carter that the exploding rocks thing had also been brilliant.She had been, and was still pretty wrapped up in her whole father/Jolinar/Martouf weirdness—the three of them were like a warped Tok’ra sitcom over in that corner.

But Daniel had gotten the communicator, had hauled Jack’s carcass out of the pit, had pretty much been keeping an eye on all of them, especially Jack, since getting busted in the first place.Jack supposed the linguist was entitled to a little exhaustion.

As long as that was all it was.Jack narrowed his eyes.If Daniel wasn’t back to his usual verbose self after the ride, the ‘gate back to the SGC from Tok’ra central, a shower and a trip to the infirmary, Jack was going to have something to say about it.Probably lots of things, at relatively high volume.

As it happened, Daniel stayed quiet all the way back to Vorash, and from there through the Stargate to General Hammond’s anxious welcome.He didn’t protest when Napoleon Fraiser made them all wait to take showers until she had checked them out, and simply sat on the bed next to Jack’s and waited his turn.

Jack registered the usual complaint about needles etc before showers, but his heart wasn’t really in it.His leg hurt, and it hurt worse when Fraiser cut the bandage off, though he was surprised by the approving noises she made.

“You must have gotten the bandage on right after the wound was inflicted,” she said, spraying it liberally with disinfectant, which made Jack’s face scrunch and eyes water.“That was a nice tight knot—it kept just about all the dirt out of the burned area.Did Major Carter bind you up?She did a good job.”

Jack frowned as he shucked his pants under her direction.“No, Daniel did it,” he said, trying to catch his archaeologist’s eyes over the doctor’s shoulder.Daniel, on hearinghis name, glanced briefly at Jack’s hairy, burned leg, then paled and turned away, biting his lip.

That was odd.Jack filed it away as part of a growing list of Daniel-weirdness, and got through the rest of the bandaging, showering, and all, with a minimum of thought.

 

Somewhere in there, after Fraiser announced that Jack would be fine and handed him a pair of crutches, Daniel had disappeared.By the time Jack made sure of the time for tomorrow morning’s debrief with Hammond, picked up his pain meds, and hobbled it to the exit desk, Daniel was long gone.

= = =

Daniel sat on his couch in blessed silence and wondered how on Earth or elsewhere he had ended up in this position.On every conceivable level, this was bad.It should have been a good day.After all, they had all escaped Hell—

Except Daniel, who had brought his hell home with him.

He tilted his head back and let it hit the top of the couch, slumping down into a boneless sprawl.The sensation of comfort lasted all of about thirty seconds before he gave up and sat up again, staring sightlessly at his other couch, the one where Jack had sat in the vision Sha’re had given him as she was dying.

 _“And you need to call the locksmith,”_ Jack’s laughing voice rang in Daniel’s head again.Damn.

How could he not have seen?

Sitting was no longer an option.Neither was pacing, since Daniel had never paced before meeting Jack, who did it often enough for it to rub off on Daniel.

Not.Going.There.

Daniel swung into the kitchen, telling himself firmly that this was where he was going all along, and that coffee and some of the cinnamon bread he had in the freezer would defrost nicely and fill the gaping void that existed where his stomach used to be. It appeared he was now missing several vital organs—he was pretty sure his heart and his brain were AWOL as well.

Amazing that it took a hallucinogen and a personal—not to mention galactic—nemesis for the supposedly sensitive and insightful Dr. Daniel Jackson to figure out that somewhere during the quest for his wife, he’d fallen in love with his best friend.

 _Yes, folks, let’s repeat it for the hard of hearing—Daniel Jackson, studier of ancient cultures, devoted follower of languages and the myths which are their most beautiful expression, has fallen for a man who thinks the Simpsons are the arbiters of wisdom and on the seventh day God created hockey._ Daniel snorted and shut the door to the freezer firmly on the unwelcome flashback to Jack in the infirmary, burned leg bare and pale and hairy, and still so thoroughly _Jack_ under the grime that Daniel was woozy with his newly noticed attraction.It was inexplicable, and crazy, and desperate, and doomed.Daniel scrubbed his face.

He was utterly unsurprised to hear the knock against the front door in the next second.He let his forehead fall against the freezer compartment a few times in rhythm with the peremptory banging issuing from his hallway, and then paused as he waited for the inevitable call of “Daniel?” which had exactly the right combination of command and appeal to peel Daniel off the refrigerator and propel him down the hall to open the door.

“Daniel!”Jack waved an exuberant bag of take-out—smelled like Greek this time, did he think that would be better than the scorched-flesh smell of the local beef teriyaki?—and scooted in on his crutches.

“Are you supposed to be up and walking?And how did you get here?You can’t drive like that.”

“Nice to seeyou too.” Jack rolled his eyes.

“Jack,” Daniel sighed.

“I got a lift from an airman, okay?And yes, small amounts of walking good.Standing in the hallway bad,” Jack deadpanned.

Despite himself, Daniel chuckled and he took the bag from Jack and shooed the older man into the living room.He returned from the kitchen with plates and utensils and glasses of water.

“No beer?” Jack pouted and Daniel bit his lip to avoid biting Jack’s.Daniel couldn’t believe how _much_ he wanted, now that he recognized that he wanted—this was Jack, after all, who was a genuine pain at least as often as he was kind of adorable.And yes, he was objectively handsome, measured by the current cultural standards, but why that combination of charm and exasperation suddenly made Daniel want to push him down on the couch and excavate him right out of his clothing was beyond the archaeologist’s comprehension.Only slightly less inexplicable was the fierce wave of protectiveness that had only barely receded since leaving the planet.Daniel was used to feeling that way for people who obviously needed it, like Sha’re post-abduction, or even Shyla.He was not used to feeling that way for hardass Special Ops colonels.

Jack was looking at him oddly and Daniel realized he was spacing out again.“No beer,” he said with an apologetic smile.“I don’t have it in me to take on Janet tomorrow.”

Jack let his head loll back against the couch.“Fair enough.Rough day.”

Daniel snorted.“Understatement.”

“Yeah.”Jack eyed him keenly from under sleepy looking eyelids.“You okay?”

Daniel shrugged.“Sure.”He sighed and let his defenses fall under Jack’s ‘no, really’ stare.“Tired, Jack.And I have the hangover from hell.No pun intended.”

Jack nodded.“Yeah.That stuff Apophis stole from Sokar’s cellar was worse than your moonshine on Abydos.”

Daniel chuckled and dropped into a chair.“There was nothing wrong with my moonshine, Jack.You’re just used to alcohol that has, you know, taste and a reasonable chance that you’re not going to go blind.”He tipped his head over to one side, as if that would help with the headache.“And anyway, it was better than your beer.”

Jack snorted and toyed with his food.“Yeah, well, at least my beer doesn’t cause hallucinations.”

Ah.Well, there was that.“Charlie?” Daniel asked cautiously.

The older man looked at him for a long moment.

“Well, Sam said she’d seen her father around the time of her mother’s death,” Daniel swallowed.“I figure, the Goa’uld are very good at figuring out ways to get to what has the ability to hurt most.”

Jack looked at him again and Daniel felt his brows crease.

“Jack?”

“At least mine was an old hurt,” the other said gruffly.“Yours must have been harder.”

Okay, now Jack had totally lost him.Unless Jack somehow knew it was he who had featured in the aborted hallucinogenic interrogation?

“Sha’re?” Jack prompted.

“Oh,” Daniel blinked.“Not, not exactly.Apophis wanted to know about the Harcesis.But I guess,” and here he shrugged, as lightly as possible.“I guess I’ve had enough hallucinations recently, it didn’t last long enough to really get to me.”

God, he was such a liar.But looking at Jack, whose eyes were so incredibly warm, and who had obviously been worried about him, and who had hauled his burned and bruised self up to Daniel’s apartment with an offering of food and a listening ear—Daniel couldn’t, just couldn’t say what was on the tip of his tongue.

 _Strangely, Jack, it appears my subconscious knew you could hurt me more than Sha’re.It also appears I love you._

Yeah, couldn’t say that at all.Jack needed Daniel to be fine, to be his friend, to be unbreakable as the Stargate and irritable as a mastadge and ultimately safe as the iris.

Nothing about loving Jack was safe.Daniel didn’t need multiple degrees to figure that out, or even all that much time.Epiphany at 16:45, conclusion to conceal said epiphany by 17:15, reaffirmation of conclusion at 18:30.Christ, even the way Daniel could fall unthinkingly into military time said enough to make Daniel bury this deeper than the ‘gate at Giza.

Jack was looking at him carefully, still, and Daniel knew they both must be beyond tired to be doing so much of the staring thing without one of them cracking wise.Or just plain cracking.

“So you’re about to get your next doctorate in the many ways you can hallucinate without actually being crazy?”

Ah, there it was.Thank God Jack was playing along with the lighter conversational tone.

“Sure, Jack, right after I get a MacArthur for writing the textbook on alien communication,” Daniel sighed in mock academic distress.“First chapter, ‘how to speak military.’”

This was it, the friendship thing.Daniel could do this.He could see Jack laughing around the rim of a beer bottle and not want to find out what hops-flavored-colonel tasted like.He could lean back on the couch and watch Jack sprawl in contented reflection and not wonder how that inch of revealed skin at Jack’s waistband would react to the brush of his fingertips.It might be hell, but he could do it.

Jack smiled as Daniel snarked at him automatically, and the archaeologist decided he needed to revise that assessment.

He could do it—be friend and not lover, be solid and safe and virtuous—but it would be hell.

Daniel scooted further forward in his seat and tilted the open take-out containers towards Jack, taking some perverse comfort from the fact that the other was relaxing now, blissfully unaware of Daniel’s painful resolution on his friend’s behalf.

Voice light, eyebrows canted, nothing to see here, no secrets.Just Daniel.

“So, how hard am I going to have to fight you for the Athenian green beans?”


End file.
